SCVNews.com | Opinion/Commentary: Snowballs in the Desert

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1932 - Robert Poore wins the greased pole climbing contest and $2.50 at Newhall's July 4th celebration [story]

Snowballs in the Desert

Now and Then in the SCV | Commentary by Darryl Manzer

Darryl Manzer | Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014

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mug_darrylmanzer2 I don’t know how the members of City Council and the employees of the city of Santa Clarita do such a great job. I can’t figure how they endure all of the terrible words that are thrown at them.

Being a civil servant isn’t easy. I think the last job I would want is that of the city manager. As I look at the fiscal status of our city and the minimal personnel problems, he is indeed a miracle worker. My hat is off to all of those unsung heroes of Santa Clarita. Ken Striplin and his professional staff deserve a huge “thank you” from all of us.

I didn’t know the city had so many people on staff and on the council who have such great business abilities – like a recent one I can’t help but tell you about.

Those folks negotiated a contract that takes care of an old bunch of blight the city has been trying to eliminate ever since the city was formed. The contract will end up bringing in around $700,000 per year. For this, we get rid of 62 items that will be replaced with just three.

Just to be clear, we get to remove some blight – and we get paid to get it removed. It isn’t going to cost us anything, and in fact will bring the city nearly $35 million over the life of the contract. That’s right, thirty-five million dollars.

Sounds like a great deal to me, and City Council thought so, too. Really – every city could use an additional $700,000 per year for just about anything.

At an election, we hire our representatives to take care of our city. Those reps have done a great job of letting the civil service staff members work well. It is a great team.

I’ve run some pretty heavy projects in my years with the Navy, and if there was something I always hated, it was folks telling me how to do my job when the project was far ahead of schedule and exceeding beyond all original expectations. Our city folks continue on in spite of our often ill-advised critiques of their work.

That contract I was writing about a couple of paragraphs back is, of course, the billboard contract.

I once had a crew on one of my research ships that could make that old boat make every mission in spite of the age of the ship. It was an old ship built in 1944 for the Army. We had to modernize it on a slim budget.

So the crew set about getting all we needed to modernize the old craft. In fact, it was said of the crew, “They can find a snowball in the Sahara and convince a passing caravan to pay for the privilege of delivering it to the ship.”

You know, that is how I feel about this contract for billboard removal. We are getting paid for having something delivered to us.

Well done, city staff. Or if I were hoisting signal flags, I would run up Bravo and Zulu. That is the Navy way of saying “well done.” Bravo Zulu.

Could we expect that we might have gotten the billboards removed and not have some sort of trade-off? The “other side” – Metro and AllVision – had to get something out of the deal. I thank the city for getting the job done that way.

Only a few of us can remember the sign technology of 50 years ago. I think it was like large sections of wallpaper placed on huge wooden structures. We have electronic boards today. What will future billboards look like, 50 years out?

I don’t know, either. I’m still getting used to the idea that my grandkids can video-conference with me so I can watch a baseball game in Kentucky when I’m here – in real time.

The city staff may have been thinking that in 50 years, we might not have billboards as we know them now. But they did negotiate a contract for the technology of “now” that gets rid of a lot of very old-technology boards.

And if an Amber Alert on one of the new electronic boards saves a child, all of this argument will have been worth it.

Now, after the special election and the debt for it has been paid, where should the revenue go to help our city?

Please let our city staff know. They are looking for more snowballs in the desert out there and have some folks bring them to us.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].

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4 Comments

Lee says:

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014 at

Clearly, no matter how many times you are told both publicly and privately what the objections are, you still don’t get it. So let me take a stab: A) Trading blight for blight is the wrong solution. If you are arguing that people want to get rid of the billboards, then people want to get rid of all billboards, not just some of them. B) A big chunk of the billboards that people want removed have already been bought out by the CC, when they paid Edwards $1.3 million for their business…that happens, regardless of this deal. C) A backroom deal happens when when the two parties meet away from the public eye and agree on terms before taking them public…and then fight for those terms, regardless of what the public wants…that is the very definition of what happened here…our CC and METRO/AllVision decided on a deal, then after making it as bulletproof as possible, brought it out to be voted on, with limited discussion. Then we learn the particulars: no negotiations with any other companies, only a quarter of the net…not half, lobbyists throwing fundraisers for two CC candidates, a 50 year contract.

Darryl, you can support this and the City Council all you want…and you can use this pulpit of yours to do it…but they are wrong…and they are going to spend $200K of the city’s money and ALL of their lobbyist money just to stay right in their minds. This is a power play, not a good deal.

BTW, you should give up whatever you are doing and immediately become a publicist…you are doing a bang up job for the 3 Blind Mice inCity Hall.

Best,

Reply
karoooon says:

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014 at

Another example of the “old guard” refusing to see the change in our community.

We are not willing to sit back and watch our Council turn our city into another LA or worse, Bell.

It’s time for the people of the SCV to stand up to the Council and say we aren’t going to take it anymore.

The people have spoken. They do not want the billboard (safety hazard) and they do not want to see some members of the Council dig their heels in to assure their personal interests garnish funding from outside companies.

Don’t believe it.. Our Councilwomen had campaign fundraisers paid for by the billboard company, one owns property right next to the land where the billboards were to be removed and near the new albatross of a library.

Shame on them, and shame on Darryl for not seeing through it.

Reply
msc545 says:

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014 at

You seem to believe that the number of billboards that will or won’t be removed is all that matters. It is not. Electronic billboards are obtrusive, in my opinion in horribly poor taste, and based on where they would be placed, a traffic hazard. I would far rather have the old ones stay right where they are than have to deal with the electronic ones. Apparently, a lot of us feel that way, since you are making such a point of devoting at least part of each one of your columns to this issue. Please have a bit of respect for those of us that disagree with you.

Reply
SCVNews.com says:

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2014 at

Webmaster’s Note: The reader should be aware that Metro (the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority) has a multi-year development agreement with Allvision LLC regarding billboards. Metro is a separate public agency and is not part of the city of Santa Clarita. Metro’s decision (it was not the city’s decision) to use Allvision falls under Metro’s contract with Allvision. (Given the contract, Metro wouldn’t be able to deal with another billboard company; and the City of Santa Clarita doesn’t have standing to negotiate with anyone in the matter. It’s Metro property.) Like any other ordinance passed by any other city or county or other public agency in California, the Metro-Santa Clarita “billboard agreement” went through the full public hearing process not once but multiple times, with both the city and Metro, as did the hearings associated with the underlying multi-year development agreement by and between Metro and Allvision. Moreover, the city of Santa Clarita is not buying Edwards Outdoor Advertising; rather, over a period of three years, the city is paying Edwards to remove billboards throughout the city, most of which are unrelated to the Metro-Santa Clarita “billboard agreement” except to the extent that the “billboard agreement” provides funding that can be used to pay Edwards the agreed-to removal costs.

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